Bush Backs Goal of Flight to Moon

Published: January 15, 2004

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The plan was put together under the direction of the National Security Council. Participants said that Vice President Dick Cheney had run several meetings and that the deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, had organized many of the options. "The president didn't make these choices, but he approved them," a senior official said.

In the end, they came up with a program that embraces the economical efficiency of using robots and probes — like the Spirit, the robotic rover now on Mars — to pave the way for the kind of far riskier manned missions that excite the imagination and loosen the purse strings in Congress.

The plan also resolves the question of what to do with the aging fleet of shuttles, which suffered two catastrophic accidents in 17 years. The retirement date of 2010 is intended to coincide with the completion of the building phase of the International Space Station, and would save the agency the arduous process of recertifying the shuttles' safety, a step the Columbia accident investigation commission insisted on.

Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr., who led the commission, said he was pleased that the national debate on the direction of the space program was beginning. That, Admiral Gehman said, could avoid again designing the next-generation space vehicle without defining its purpose.

"The board was not pleased to find ourselves here this late in the shuttle life span and not have a replacement on the drawing board, much less under construction," said Admiral Gehman, who is retired. He said the shuttle "doesn't have a lot of life left in it."

The shuttle, said Eugene A. Cernan, the last man to leave his footprints on the Moon, was no longer suited to America's needs. "It's sophisticated, it's high-tech, but it doesn't go anywhere and it's expensive," Mr. Cernan said on Wednesday.

But Mr. O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, left open the question of what the replacement would look like, or even whether it would be a reusable vehicle like the shuttle or a one-time shot, like the Apollo space capsules.

"We have to avoid getting fond of a design," said Mr. O'Keefe, a former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and chief financial officer of the Defense Department.

No matter what the answer to the design problem, building a vehicle with the kind of range and sustainability that Mr. Bush described on Wednesday would be a huge undertaking. John Logsdon, the director of the space policy institute at George Washington University and a member of the commission that investigated the Columbia accident said Mr. Bush had done a good job of describing the mission, but added: "It's a modest beginning to a rather bold vision. But given the budget and political realities, I think this is the best we can do."